How Kesha's Hair and Makeup Have Reflected Her Personal Life

Since Kesha came on the scene, her penchant for glitter and neon hair dye hasn’t gone unnoticed. When her debut single “TiK ToK” hit the airwaves in 2009, Kesha’s persona was classified as a party-girl misfit who rocked beachy blonde waves, smudgy black liner, and the occasional streak of face paint. She was new on the scene, (mostly) fresh-faced and ready to hit the dance floor (at least on the surface). She wore a sparkly silver overlay on her left eye — a lightning bolt — evoking a kind of warrior spirit even before we knew what was to come. From the beginning, it was clear that Kesha had her own beauty standards and she wasn’t about to conform to anyone else’s along the way.

With both her music and her aesthetic, she was clearly setting herself apart from the mainstream pop image Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera cultivated before her. And for the latter, she had help from her makeup artist and BFF Vittorio Masecchia (and his kit of all-natural products). The duo has been making beauty magic together for years. From 2009 to 2011, Kesha opted for a messy-glam vibe, experimenting with bold lipstick colors, studded brows, and lots and lots of glitter. One of her wildest looks was in 2010 at an awards show in Madrid where Masecchia covered her in hi-vis pink, yellow, and orange color-blocked paint. Being different is something Kesha never shied away from, but rather fully embraced.

But then things changed: In October 2013, a profile published in The New Yorker on Dr. Luke revealed creative differences between the producer and pop singer and that things were not going well, something that Kesha alluded to that same month when Rolling Stone asked in an interview if she had "any creative control now" and Kesha responded, "not really." In public, she wore dark lipsticks, dark eye shadow, and even darker clothing. Reading between the lines, even her appearance revealed she was creatively repressed and silently suffering.

By January 2014, Kesha checked herself into rehab to treat an eating disorder. Later that year, she also filed a lawsuit against Dr. Luke seeking to end her recording and music publishing contracts with him, alleging both physical and emotional abuse. Dr. Luke denied the accusations and fired back with lawsuits of his own. Kesha has since dropped the civil lawsuit in California accusing Dr. Luke of abuse, while some of the lawsuits are still ongoing.

Following treatment, she changed her stage name from “Ke$ha” to her real one, “Kesha.” During that year, the singer seemed to get her glow back, stepping out with hair that was every color of the rainbow (she may have been one of the first millennial celebrities to experiment with the rainbow hair trend, honestly). By August of 2014, Kesha was revealing a more liberated version of herself.

In 2015, her hair oscillated from platinum blonde to lime green, but her makeup was more natural than it had ever been. With soft smoky eyes and a touch of mascara, Kesha stuck to a more fresh-faced appearance — something she carried into 2016 when she and Zedd released “True Colors,” and she went on the F*** The World tour with her band The Creepies. This was just the beginning of Kesha’s long-awaited return.

With Kesha’s release of 2017’s “Praying,” the singer revealed the start of a new era. No longer prevented from releasing original music, she was liberated in more ways than one. While there’s still quite a bit of red tape due to legal issues, and Rainbow was released on Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe records, it's the first time in a very long while that she's been able to put out original songs in the way she has wanted to. Rainbow is a fitting title for her new record, and in “Praying,” we see looking as bare and natural as ever, showing off her freckles and surrounded by colors — but not covering her face like they did in the past. It’s something that magnifies the fact that she wasn’t able to show the world her true self because of the music industry’s limitations.

Perhaps the most telling and beautiful image that fully translates her narrative is in her press photos, where she’s wearing rainbow face paint that streams down her cheeks like tears. Not only does it call to mind freedom, but catharsis. As she stares up at the sky, the color flows back into her as it flows out of her eyes. Makeup and hair are powerful tools of expression, and if you look closely, Kesha’s been using them to tell us her story all along.